Vince Penman is a commercial and advertising photographer, director/producer and interactive art director who lives in Austin Texas, with his wife Rachael Penman and children.
This blog is a mixture of professional, personal and everything in between. Life is more than just about work.
I have been so flipping behind on the bog it is sad. But it is actually good as I have been very very busy. Here is the latest from your’s truly. Another low budget spot that I refuse to make look low budget. It is kind of interesting how this one came about. The client didn’t have any phones in that I could photograph, so I had to do the whole thing with one flat image. Nothing you see here was done with 3D software, this is all Indesign psuedo-3D.
Last night I shot a timelapse of a small section of Unalakleet. Now it looks like it might have been the only chance I’m going to get. A few hours ago we got word that a severe storm is on it’s way. We might have waves coming in 12 to 15 feet high. The town is prepared, but we might get stuck here. Here are some photos of day 2. Technically the day isn’t over yet, but we are eating lunch in a pizza place and they have the fastest Internet in the village. Plus we might not have power in a couple of hours.
I’m currently up in Unalakleet, Alaska shooting a commercial for a cellphone company. I’ve been taking some random iPhone shots and felt like sharing. First day… It’s really cold. Really cold. Especially after living in Austin Texas for the last year.
I’ve been waiting to post this a while. I was going to do a behind the scenes and have some details of the making of the actual props, but it will have to wait, as I am really, really busy at the moment. The actors have been waiting to see the finished product. Here it is in it’s glory with more info to come, Rocketman:
p.s. Today marks the anniversary of the day Doc Brown hit his head and came up with the Flux Capacitor, which makes time travel possible. Since I have a nice hat tip to the Capacitor in this commercial, I thought it fitting I post this today.
Directed and produced by Vince Penman and Matt Twohy.
Just finished doing the post work for this image for an ad and thought you’d like to see it. I had way too much fun making the jet pack for the shoot. We shot this on Saturday, just two days ago. We were also supposed to shoot video for the TV commercial part of the campaign, alas, Texas was receiving MUCH needed rain all weekend (worst drought since 1950) and we couldn’t shoot outside. We are scheduled for Tuesday to shoot the commercial, so keep your eyes peeled for something early next week. As promised I will have a blog post dedicated to some behind the scenes action as well.
Here is some close-up on a little detail:
Also what the ad will most likely look like for the print campaigns:
You are looking at the final picture that was edited for the coffee table book. Yes, that means the photo editing is now finished! All 100 portraits. I feel like this woman above right now. Giddy beyond all. If it were not 4:00 AM, I would be jumping around the house. No, I’d be running down the street Doc Brown style, with my arms held high. What does this mean? It means Tiffany needs to get her buns down to Austin, so we can shoot the cover photo and plop the text in, and get this book printed. Then make it a New York Times best-seller in the Coolest Photography Coffee Table Book category. That category exists, really .
In reality, we want this book to be a huge success, not only because we put so much time, time, energy and time into this book, but because we believe in the message. This book is about destroying negative Alaska Native stereotypes. There is still so much intolerance and ignorance in the world today. Even with the culture shift of becoming “more acceptive,” the pendulum swings just as easily in the other direction. I think this message can be applied to any culture. Ignorance begets intolerance. So buy the book and get educated.
OK. I’m now off of my soapbox. I really am excited to have these done. It took me too long. Sometimes I would spend an hour on one image. NOT, I must quickly add because they needed to be fixed. I just want everything to be perfect. In reality the images are hardly touched up. We want honest faces. No liquify tool. No magazine-style-have-no-pores skin. Just honest to goodness portraits.
So there you have it. Now it’s time to run down the street… if only I had a Delorean.
I am really, really excited. No, this is not equipment to build a bomb, so no need to inform any authorities. I am working on props for an upcoming photo shoot and television commercial production. I spent a couple of hours at Home Depot, possibly one of my most favorite things to do, and carefully selected items for a, hopefully, impressive prop. I also spent a little time at the Salvation Army too. I forgot about the cool little finds you can get there. Anyways I don’t want to give away too much, as I am hoping to make a cool production video out of the whole process.
Here is the game. Try to guess what this pile of second hand junk and Home Depot items will be.
Clue: Napoleon Dynamite meets Empire Strikes Back.
I am starting to breath the fresh air at the end of the tunnel. The images for the coffee table book are a few days away from being completed. What is interesting is that near the end were some of the first pictures that we took for the project. This picture, was in fact the very first. It has been a long work in progress, but the book is going to be so worth the wait.
I forgot to post something about this shoot earlier, but I just remembered that I wanted to talk about it. I did a creative portrait session for the restaurant chain Dave and Busters a few weeks ago. We shot their employees for their advertising and marketing materials. Everyone evolved was great to work with and we had a great time. I bring up this shoot only because of the fact that they requested raw untouched files for the final product. I have to admit, I had a really hard time doing this. Not because I don’t trust anyone else to touch my files, but because I am so used to working a lot in post production with my images.
Typically with the images I produce for advertising, we have a look we want to achieve and I know what to do to achieve the image. Usually I take several shots and combine multiple images to get the look I or the client wants. But what about raw images? RAW. Photographers, imagine if you weren’t able to do anything with your pictures in Photoshop. Does Lightroom cut it for a lot of you? Do you stop after that? Or do you, like me, work a lot in Photoshop afterward. Is it a crutch?
I don’t believe there is a right or wrong answer. We have long crossed the faded lines of computer art and photography. Manipulated images are so common place that we don’t even think twice about seeing or making them. Colors have become so saturated and unnatural, that when we don’t see a photo that has a lot of contrast and or saturation, we think something is wrong with the photo.
I know I see the world a lot different than my camera. Maybe that’s why ten years ago, I was producing images like these:
Anyways, back the the thought provoking question. How easy would it be for you to give someone your untouched files?
For the past month, I have been doing nothing but making commercials, at least it feels like it, and for the most part it is true. I am actually working on yet another one as I write this. Total protonic reversal. That’s not the name of it, that’s just how I feel. I told you the line between photographer and video producer is thinning.
The latest commercial I did, which was approved today from the client, was an absolute blast to produce. And I am going to fill you in on how I did it. But first the spot:
I wanted to have a feeling of constant movement in each of the shots. In order to achieve this I needed to use a Steadicam. Well, the Merlin Steadicam costs $800 and no one rents them nearby. Since we have a set, and rather low I might add, budget for these spots, any money we spend is less we make. So I decided to DIY it. I will spare you photos of my shoddy machine workmanship, but I will just say it worked fantastically… once I got the hang of it. I basically followed the plans from this guy. After a couple of trips to Home Depot, I was set. (I might do another post and show how I made the thing with pictures and all I just don’t have time right now)
For the coloring of the spot, I wanted something really different. We have Magic Bullet Looks, and I LOVE that plugin, don’t get me wrong, I just wanted a little more punch. So I thought about doing it in Photoshop. Yes you can edit some video in Photoshop, but I wanted even more control than that. So, once I got the spot edited to where I wanted it, I exported the footage as a psd sequence. What that means, is I exported every frame to a Photoshop file. Then I could control each frame how I wanted, just like any photo in Photoshop.
A lot of people know I am not a big fan of actions. In fact I get fed up with all of the paid actions that people sell online. Don’t get me started, really. There are some actions, however, that I think are totally worth the money. The actions from Totally Rad Actions. Seriously. This isn’t a plug, but I truly think these are possibly the most worthwhile actions that anyone can buy out there. The rest, don’t even bother. Create your own.
So what I did was to create a “recipe” of several of the actions. Then I ran a Photoshop batch on all of the 900 images, and voila. I re-imported the frames into After Effects and bam, that was it.
I know it sounds like a lot of work, but I think it was well worth the effort. I even tried to recreate the effect with Magic Bullet and couldn’t pull it off.
If there are any TRA users out there, here is the recipe for kicks:
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